Middle East and North Africa

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      What the accidentally leaked war group chat reveals about the Trump administration | Moira Donegan

      by

      Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of the Donald Trump era, for me, has been in learning the difference between being shocked and being surprised. And indeed it was a bit shocking to learn, via an essay published by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, that a high-profile journalist had been included on a chat on the commercial messaging app in which a military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen was coordinated – including discussions of the timing of the attack, debates about political messaging, personnel coordination and weapons to be used – seemingly without anyone noticing that he was there.It was shocking that their incompetence was so fortuitous – that the person they included, seemingly accidentally, in their unsecured group chat about war plans was someone so uniquely equipped to broadcast their idiocy to a large audience. But it was in no way surprising that members of the Trump administration are behaving with such recklessness, shortsightedness, indifference to responsibility or peevish sadism. Of course they’re planning overseas bombings in a group chat, I thought when I first read Goldberg’s account. Because we live in an age where the people with the superlative power are those who are least temperamentally suited for it; because the stupidity of this White House outpaces any attempt at parody; and because these guys are exactly as dumb in real life as they look on television.The story goes like this: as part of its backing of Israel’s wars in the Middle East, the Trump administration sought to strike against Houthi rebels, a coalition of Yemeni militants and pirates who have been attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea in an attempt to pressure the west to stop supporting Israel’s war on Palestinians. Trump authorized a military strike on a scale more lethal and less precise than those that had previously been launched by the Biden administration; according to a Signal user identified as JD Vance, the president wanted to “send a message” and convey strength on the world stage. In the chat, no other strategic rationale for the strike was offered.Such operations are supposed to be planned in secret, so that neither the targets, nor foreign governments, nor members of the media are aware of them ahead of time; the secrecy is what keeps the military personnel who carry out these strikes safe from some threats to their lives, and what allows the US to carry out its objectives unprompted. But the planning is also supposed to be documented, as much federal action is, to comply with records-keeping requirements.The resulting measures can be intense: often, to discuss classified matters, high-ranking federal officials enter safe rooms equipped with anti-surveillance technology, in which they are not allowed to take their phones; at other times, they are only permitted to discuss such matters on specially secured government-issued devices. (Signal, according to Goldberg, is not downloadable on these government devices, meaning that the administration officials in the chat were using their personal phones.) These are measures that have been put in place in order to protect interests that are worth protecting: to guard against foreign intelligence agencies (or, for that matter, magazine editors) learning of America’s plans, to keep Americans safe, to comply with records-keeping laws. Abiding by them is a sign of respect – both for the power of the executive, and for the law.And so that’s not what the Trump administration did. Instead, in order to coordinate the military strike, which was apparently greenlit by Trump in an in-person meeting in the White House situation room, the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, created an enormous national security threat by convening a planning group on a commercial messaging app.Why did the Trump officials use Signal for this, of all things? The reality is that they’re probably using it for a lot; the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has become something of a handbook for the Trump regime, recommends using private apps to conduct official business, so as to evade records-keeping laws. Signal is an app that is marketed for its privacy and message-disappearing features: a single member of a chat can mark messages to be deleted, permanently, for all members. (In another seemingly illegal move, Waltz reportedly set the messages in the war-planning group chat to disappear after a matter of weeks.)If the Trump administration’s members are habitually using Signal to conduct official business, the danger is not only that any foreign intelligence agency worth their salt (or any journalist who happens to benefit from their incompetence) could be listening in with relative ease. It’s that the records-keeping apparatus that is meant to preserve such conversations could not reach and document them – meaning that the use of Signal would specifically make such sensitive national security information more accessible to foreign adversaries and less accessible to historians and journalists here in the US.The content of the chats themselves is grim, too, providing an insight into the petty and eager social dynamics within Trump’s inner circle and the administration’s principle-thin commitment to any understanding of policy. Vance pipes up to suggest delaying the strike; he claims to be worried about public opinion on the issue, and complains that an attack on the Houthis would provide economic benefits to Europe, who he wants to punish for some reason. He does not seem to feel he has enough clout to actually oppose the strike, however, undermining his own complaints with caveats that he will defer to others.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimes in, clearly thinking he’s supposed to be the center of attention, to eagerly but insubstantially support Vance’s points before pivoting to saying he wants to go ahead with the strike anyway. He has the cringing eagerness of a personality hire: he wants to be seen talking, but doesn’t really have much to say.Stephen Miller, Trump’s surrogate in the chat, says, bizarrely, that Europe will be made to compensate America for the strike at some later date, reflecting the Trumpian vision of all politics as an extortion racket to extract money, favors, or – perhaps more to the point – shows of deference. Everyone defers to Miller immediately. It is a group of very stupid people, trying to create post-hoc justifications for something their boss told them to do, not thinking too hard about what they’re actually doing – which is killing people.There is a risk, in talking about the Trump administration’s decision to plan a military strike over a Signal group chat in which they accidentally included a prominent journalist, of making it seem like the only problem with the administration’s actions was in their breach of confidentiality and decorum.But the controversy that erupted about the Signal chat after Goldberg revealed his inclusion on Monday seemed almost to overshadow the strategic folly and moral depravity of the strike itself: a reckless escalation in a volatile region that risked provoking Iran, the Houthi’s backer and a nuclear state, and which took the lives of 53 human beings, including five children. That the strike seems to have been planned in a way that endangered national security and violated several federal laws should not blind us to the fact that the strike itself was stupid.But there is something in the story of the accidentally leaked war secrets group chat that speaks to the essence of the second Trump administration: its cavalier incompetence, its contempt for human life, its fealty to grievance and resentment, indifference to consequence, and jeering, jocular enthusiasm for violence. It shows us something about the Trump administration that we have previously seen only rarely: what they act like when they think they are in private. It’s not a pretty sight.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 225 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      I am a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana. I am being targeted for my activism | Mahmoud Khalil

      by

      My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices under way against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.On March 8, I was taken by DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours – I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns – based on racism and disinformation – to go unchecked.Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their BA degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC [Student Workers of Columbia] President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change – leading the charge against the Vietnam war, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

      This statement was originally published here More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Netanyahu will never accept peace. Where will his perpetual war lead next? | Simon Tisdall

      by

      The first and last rule of Benjamin Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual warfare is brutally to the point: peace cannot and must not be allowed to last. As indiscriminate, deadly fire once again descends upon the defenceless people of Gaza, unleashed on the orders of Israel’s bellicose prime minister, an anguished cry is heard. Is the precious two-month-long ceasefire with Hamas definitively over? To which comes the dismaying answer: it barely matters. This truce, now shattering into a million pieces, was but a brief, deceptive pause in a war that never stops.It doesn’t stop because Netanyahu is sustained in office by the unceasing state of national emergency that he and his supporters have nurtured and prolonged since the 7 October 2023 terrorist attacks. The war doesn’t stop because Netanyahu’s overarching aim – the destruction of Palestinian hopes of nationhood – is doomed to fail. It does not stop because those, inside Israel and abroad, who criticise Israeli government actions face being dismissed and abused for supposedly acting not in good faith and out of alarm at the human toll, but from antisemitic motives.Most of all, perhaps, the war that the terrorists triggered 18 months ago continues, and threatens once more to expand, because Netanyahu and his far-right Jewish nationalist and ultra-religious partners have found in it a vehicle to pursue the larger goal of a greater Israel. They and their violent settler allies use it as an excuse to expand land grabs and intimidate Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank. New areas of Syria’s Golan Heights have been seized. Resettlement of Gaza itself is another stated objective.Perpetual warfare can only be sustained if the other “side” continues to fight. So degraded are Hamas’s forces, it almost seems unable to do so any longer. The lack of an immediate armed response to the Israeli strikes that began on Monday night speaks to relative weakness. And yet Hamas is not vanquished. Each time a hostage was handed over, its black-hooded fighters made a great show of militant defiance. As long as any credible, agreed “day after” plan is lacking – and absent a ground invasion and full-scale, long-term occupation – Hamas will remain in effective charge in Gaza. And so the war goes on.Netanyahu did not want the ceasefire in the first place and has constantly sought a breakdown he could blame on others. He only consented to stop shooting on 19 January under pressure from Donald Trump and his ubiquitous envoy, Steve Witkoff. Due to be inaugurated the following day, Trump was imperiously demanding an end to the conflict his predecessor, Joe Biden, failed to halt. Loth to rain on Trump’s parade, and eager to win favour, Netanyahu agreed, fingers crossed tightly behind his back.Yet even then, with more than 48,000 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands injured or traumatised and most of Gaza’s 2 million population homeless, Netanyahu was not ready to stop. He knew that far-right cabinet ministers would not tolerate peace for long. One, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had already resigned in protest. Others were threatening to do so, thereby potentially collapsing his government. He knew, though for him this has been a secondary consideration throughout, that many Israeli hostages remained in captivity – 59 at the last count, alive and dead.Netanyahu never seriously intended to honour the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to begin on 1 March and which calls for full Israeli military withdrawal. He blocked humanitarian aid; he cut water and electricity supplies; he delayed second-phase implementation and obstructed talks to get it back on track. He waged war by other means. And when these provocations failed, he insisted, in breach of the ceasefire deal, that Hamas unilaterally liberate more hostages while offering only limited prisoner releases and a temporary truce extension in return.Perpetual warfare, even when undeclared, is difficult to justify and Netanyahu, indicted for war crimes by the international criminal court and widely condemned in Europe and the Arab world, is desperately short of backers. His predicament has worsened of late. Accused of a growing authoritarianism, he is embroiled in a row over his bid to sack the Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar. A new corruption scandal involving Qatari money also swirls around him. In this context, a Gaza “distraction” may be considered timely.“Netanyahu is waging a holding action on every possible front – against early elections, against a state commission of inquiry [into the 7 October attacks], against a deal that would bring back the 59 remaining hostages, living and dead,” wrote Haaretz’s Amos Harel. “The prime minister is acting like someone who has nothing left to lose. Intensifying the battle to the point of chaos serves him.”With more than 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed so far, and with Israel threatening continuing and expanding strikes, cries of anger, horror and dismay from the Palestinians, the UN, international aid agencies and foreign governments echo like ghostly laments across the devastated Gazan wasteland. They are as familiar as they are futile and disregarded.A far from chastened White House, proudly confirming complicity in the Israeli strikes, appears keen they continue. The January ceasefire process appears dead. Trump’s absurd plan for a Gaza Riviera is nowhere to be seen or heard now. Thwarted, he hits back vicariously, egging on Netanyahu. Yet it would be naive not to see a broader, schematic Trump connection. In recent days, he has rattled sabres in Iran’s face, demanding Tehran resume talks on curtailing its nuclear programme or face military action. At the same time, he launched huge airstrikes on Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen.In Trump’s simplistic, zero-sum world, it’s all the same deal. “As President Trump has made clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran – all those who seek to terrorise not just Israel but the US – will see a price to pay, and all hell will break loose,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said. Is Yemen an early warning? Is Trump moving to defend Israel against Iranian attack – a possibility relentlessly rehearsed by Netanyahu to justify his unending state of war? Or is Trump actually preparing the ground for an Israeli-US strike going the other way, as many in Tehran believe?Like some previous US presidents, and oblivious as ever to history, Trump believes he can remake the Middle East almost by an act of imperial will. But unlike Barack Obama, who dreamed in Cairo in 2009 of a democratic renaissance, Trump is remodelling by diktat, backed by the use or threat of brute force. Palestine is the benighted place in which Trump’s messiah complex and Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual war collide. Where next? And who now will help those who cannot help themselves?

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      US rebuts Hamas’s ‘entirely impractical’ ceasefire demands

      by

      The Trump administration has accused Hamas of making “entirely impractical” demands and stalling on a deal to release a US-Israeli hostage in exchange for an extension of the Gaza ceasefire.“Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not,” the office of Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and the US national security council said in a statement. “Hamas is well aware of the deadline, and should know that we will respond accordingly if that deadline passes,” it said, adding that Trump had already vowed Hamas would “pay a severe price” for not freeing hostages.A week ago Trump repeated a threat to destroy Hamas in a “last warning” to release the hostages, but it is unclear exactly to which of several potential deadlines the new statement referred.The US appears to have brushed aside an offer made earlier on Friday by the militant Islamist organisation to free Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American hostage who was abducted while serving as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces during Hamas’s surprise raid into Israel in October 2023, and the remains of four other Israeli-Americans who have died in captivity in Gaza.“Unfortunately, Hamas has chosen to respond by publicly claiming flexibility while privately making demands that are entirely impractical without a permanent ceasefire,” the statement added.The reaction from the US dashed any hopes of sudden progress in continuing indirect negotiations in Qatar over the fragile ceasefire in Gaza but will comes as a relief to the Israeli government.The initial phase of the ceasefire in the devastated territory came into effect in January but lapsed almost two weeks ago. In recent statements, Hamas has said it wants Israel to implement the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to definitively end the conflict.Israel has so far refused to move to the second phase, and is calling for an extension of several weeks to the first phase instead, leaving open the possibility of a new offensive in the months to come.Witkoff has presented a “bridge” proposal in Qatar to extend the first phase of the truce to mid-April if Hamas releases living hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.“Hamas was told in no uncertain terms that this ‘bridge’ would have to be implemented soon – and that dual US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander would have to be released immediately,” the statement said.After the Hamas statement, Netanyahu’s office said Israel had “accepted the Witkoff outline and showed flexibility”, but said “Hamas is refusing and will not budge from its positions”.“At the same time, it continues to use manipulation and psychological warfare – the reports about Hamas’s willingness to release American hostages are intended to sabotage the negotiations,” the prime minister’s office said.It added that Netanyahu would convene his ministerial team on Saturday night to receive a detailed report from the negotiation team and “decide on the next steps for the release of hostages”.Netanyahu has consistently opposed any permanent end to the war in Gaza, in part due to domestic political considerations. However, the Israeli leader has made it clear that maintaining good relations with the White House is a priority.After more than 16 months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt, Washington recently opened a direct channel of talks with Hamas with the aim of freeing US citizens abducted by the organisation during its raid into Israel.Hamas abducted 251 hostages during its attack and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.In a social media post earlier this month, Donald Trump said there would be “hell to pay” if all the 58 hostages still in Gaza were not released. Fewer than half are thought to be still alive.In an attempt to pressure Hamas, Israel has cut off all supplies of goods to Gaza and on Sunday stopped any remaining electricity supplies from Israel to the territory.Almost the entire population of Gaza was displaced by Israel’s military offensive, which killed 48,500 people, mostly civilians, and reduced swaths of the territory to rubble.The six-week first phase of the ceasefire led to the exchange of 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight others, in return for the release of about 1,800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. It also allowed much-needed food, shelter and medical assistance to re-enter Gaza.Official reaction from the Israeli government to the news last week of direct talks between the US and Hamas was limited to a single terse statement by the office of Netanyahu acknowledging the negotiations, but the mass-market newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Israel had been “stunned to discover that, behind its back, Trump’s envoy had flirted for weeks in Doha” with a senior Hamas official. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      There can be no ‘Israel exception’ for free speech | Kenneth Roth

      by

      The Trump administration’s threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil seems to reflect a dangerous disregard for freedom of expression – a blatant example of official censorship to curb criticism of Israel.Khalil was a recent graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He holds a green card, giving him permanent residence status, and is married to a US citizen. They are expecting their first child soon. Immigration agents arrested him last week in his university housing and sent him for detention from New York City to Louisiana. He had been a leader of protests against Israeli war crimes in Gaza.Beyond that, the facts are contested. His friends called him “kind, expressive and gentle”. A Columbia professor described him as “someone who seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue. This is not someone who engages in violence, or gets people riled up to do dangerous things.”But Donald Trump, hailing his arrest, suggested Khalil was among students “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. The administration has presented no facts to back up these assertions, but even were it to do so, the suggestion that permissible speech can be a basis for deportation is deeply troubling. Trump vowed more such deportation efforts.Ordinarily, the first amendment protects even offensive speech. Although the government retains greater latitude to deport non-citizens, Trump’s rhetoric suggests an intention to step way over the line of propriety. What does it mean to be “anti-American”? As we saw during the McCarthy era, people can face that accusation for a wide range of legitimate political views. Such campaigns are the antithesis of the free debate that is essential for US democracy.As for the charge of “antisemitism”, Trump seems to be fueling a disturbing tendency to use claims of antisemitism to silence criticism of the Israeli government. Antisemitism is a serious problem that threatens Jews around the world. But if people see accusations of antisemitism as mere efforts to censor critics of Israel, it would cheapen the concept at a time when the defense against real antisemitism is urgently needed.Even Trump’s unsupported suggestion that Khalil is “pro-terrorist” needs unpacking. To begin with, opposing Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Palestinian civilians, as well as its starvation of them, does not make anyone pro-terrorist. Israel is required to carry out its military response to Hamas’s appalling murders and abductions of 7 October 2023 in accordance with international humanitarian law. War crimes by one side never support war crimes by the other. Pointing that out, if that’s what Khalil did, does not make him “pro-terrorist”; it makes him pro-civilian.The Trump administration’s retaliation against Khalil is part of its larger attack on campus protests against Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Just days earlier, the administration announced the withdrawal of $400m in federal funding from Columbia for supposedly failing to protect Jewish students and faculty during anti-Israel protests, the vast majority of which were entirely peaceful. Other universities have now been threatened with a similar suspension of their funding.Coincidentally, I spoke on the Columbia campus days before Khalil’s detention. As a Jew, I did not feel the least bit threatened. Indeed, many of the protesters against Israeli atrocities have been Jewish. Again, Trump’s pretext for censoring critics of Israel is transparently thin.If we tolerate an Israel exception to our rights of free speech, we can be sure that other exceptions will follow. Trump likes to half-jokingly refer to himself as a “king”. Are we heading toward a Thailand-style lèse majesté under which criticism of the king is criminalized?But censoring criticism of Israel is a poor strategy even for protecting Israel. Trump’s plan to “solve” Israel’s Palestinian problem by forcibly deporting millions of Palestinians would be a huge war crime; it has been rightly rejected by the Arab states that Trump envisioned receiving the refugees or later paying to rebuild Gaza.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFailing that plan, the Israeli government would prefer the status quo – endless occupation – but the world increasingly rejects that option as apartheid, as did the international court of justice in July. Another option would be to recognize the “one-state reality” created by Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refuses to provide equal rights to all residents. Roughly the same number of Jews and Arabs like between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, so Israel would lose its Jewish majority.The most realistic, legal and enduring option remains a two-state solution, an Israeli and Palestinian state living side by side in peace. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has devoted his political career to avoiding a Palestinian state, but it is the best prospect for lasting peace.In pressing Netanyahu to agree to the current temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Trump showed his capacity to exert pressure on the Israeli government to take steps toward peace that it resists. He could do the same for a two-state solution.But to build a political support for this important step, we need free debate in the United States. Trump’s efforts to censor criticism of Israeli misconduct is a recipe for endless war and atrocities. Free speech is required if we hope to do better. Trump should reverse his misguided effort to deport Khalil.

      Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book Righting Wrongs was just published by Knopf More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Mahmoud Khalil’s treatment should not happen in a democracy | Moustafa Bayoumi

      by

      Forced disappearance, kidnapping, political imprisonment – take your pick. These terms all describe what has happened with the Trump administration’s first arrest for thought crimes, something that should never happen in a democracy.But it has, to Mahmoud Khalil, a recently graduated master’s student from Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs. And for each minute that Khalil is held in detention, every one of us should feel like our own individual rights in this country are being shredded. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is a barefaced attempt by the Trump administration to destroy free thinking while murdering due process and free speech along the way. This is an ominous development.On the evening of Saturday 8 March, Khalil, who is a lawful permanent resident of the US (a green card holder), and his US-citizen wife, who is eight months pregnant, were returning home to their Columbia University apartment in upper Manhattan. According to reports, the couple had just unlocked the door to the building when plainclothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security pushed their way in like thugs and demanded Khalil surrender himself for arrest.The lead agent told Khalil’s lawyer, whom Khalil had immediately called, that his student visa was being revoked. But Khalil doesn’t have a student visa for the very simple reason that he is a lawful permanent resident! Apparently confused, the agent next responded that Khalil’s green card was being revoked – which, by US law, cannot be done without a lot of due process. When pressed by Khalil’s lawyer to show a warrant for arrest, the agent simply hung up on the lawyer, shoved Khalil into handcuffs, and carted him away. As of this writing, Khalil is in a detention facility in Louisiana.Let’s be clear. If you grew up in Egypt or Nicaragua or Russia, you would recognize this behavior. If you have read the work of Milan Kundera or Ariel Dorfman or Breyten Breytenbach, you will recognize this behavior. This is how the authoritarian regimes always operate, seeking to demonize their critics and neutralize their opposition by lies, exaggerations and the blunt force of state power. This despicable and dangerous conduct has now come to the land of the free and the home of the brave as official policy.The Trump administration doesn’t even bother to disguise the ideological assault that characterizes Khalil’s arrest. Khalil was an active member of Columbia University’s protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, a war that has been characterized as a genocide by Israel by experts and multiple human rights organizations around the world. Khalil also served as a negotiator between the university administration and student activists who had set up an encampment on campus.It was in that role that Khalil’s profile grew, particularly among extreme rightwing organizations supporting Israel that began sending lists of students to the Trump administration who, they said, should be deported from the US because of their views. This blatant attempt to shut down free speech picked up after Donald Trump issued two executive orders in late January that called for deporting “perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment”. (It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the Trump administration is actively canceling every form of protection for other minority populations, while appearing deeply concerned about antisemitism, as it also tacitly supports antisemitic behavior.)Khalil had already suffered so much harassment by these pro-Israel groups that the day before his arrest, he wrote to the interim president of Columbia University, telling her that he was afraid that government officials or private actors would target him or his family, urging her to provide him legal support and protection. After his arrest, the official White House account on X issued a post that said: “Shalom, Mahmoud,” using a Hebrew word that can mean goodbye. Haha. Whoever wrote the post must think this very clever. But in a court of law, the post will only buttress the argument that Trump is on a rampage to shut down any types of speech he doesn’t like.Exactly which crime has Mahmoud Khalil committed? Which activities has he engaged in to warrant arrest and deportation? The best the Department of Homeland Security can come up with are the same flimsy innuendo that we hear over and over again. Any show of concern for Palestinians is, presto, turned into “activities aligned to Hamas”.That “aligned to Hamas” is not a legal standard is hardly surprising. It comes after all from the Trump administration, which operates almost definitionally as the opposite of a legal standard. Expecting something reasonable from this administration is like eating a razor-blade sandwich and thinking you won’t come out all bloodied, which is of course why the Trump administration is repeatedly offering you such aromatic and enticing fresh bread.I expect as much from Trump, but I demand more from Columbia University, my own alma mater. After Trump withdrew some $400m of federal funding over an unproven and completely ideologically driven allegation that Columbia was a hotbed of antisemitism, the interim president didn’t bother to defend her institution. Instead, she immediately sent us Columbia affiliates an email to “assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns”. I’m educated enough to know that the word “appeasement” has a specific history. I also know that cowards run away from Palestine, even if they too will be the ones who suffer in the end.I also demand more from my local officials. This federal assault on protected speech from a New Yorker should raise huge alarms from the mayor of New York, but all we’ve heard from Eric Adams thus far is … well, what sound would crickets make if they were flying business class on Turkish Airlines? If it’s any sound at all, I imagine the jet engine hums louder than the lack of objection he’s made. His silence is matched only by Andrew Cuomo, Adams’s new competition for the next New York mayoral race. Together, they might have enough courage to lose a game of chicken to the lion in the Wizard of Oz.But mostly, I demand a whole lot more from the Democratic party. Where is Hakeem Jeffries? Where is Chuck Schumer? They seem to believe the best way to defend free speech in this country is not to speak at all. Irrelevance has never been so recognizable.Democracy has always been a fragile, improvised, teetering wall of bricks that extends high in the air. It takes a lot of people to support it, but it gives quickly when faced with pressure from the other side. The thing is, even if you’re not supporting it, you’ll still get crushed when the wall falls. Too many people seem ready to be crushed. That’s only the tiniest reason to support Mahmoud Khalil. We all need to rush to the wall and do what we can to free him from his unjust imprisonment. For him and also for us. Because, you know what? He won’t be the last.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Threaten campuses, shut down debate: that’s what free speech looks like under Trump | Owen Jones

      by

      For those who fear Donald Trump is a despot in the making, don’t worry: he has an answer. “I’ve stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America,” he triumphantly declared in his State of the Union address. “It’s back!” JD Vance scolded Europe in his speech at the Munich security conference last month, declaring that “free speech is in retreat” across the continent.Like all authoritarian creeds, Trumpism turns reality on its head and empties words of their meaning in an effort to sow confusion and disarray among its critics. On the same day Trump announced the revival of free speech in Congress, he posted on Truth Social that federal funding for educational institutions that allow “illegal protests” will be ceased. Notably, illegality was not defined, but the issue Trump is referring to, of course, is Palestine. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” he declared. “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”Trump’s first target: Columbia University, which has had $400m of federal funding slashed because of what the government says is “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”. At least nine other campuses – including Harvard and the University of California – could be next. All were the sites of overwhelmingly peaceful encampments protesting over Israel’s genocidal attack against the Palestinian people. They weren’t simply opposing their government’s facilitation of this atrocity, through weapons, aid and diplomatic support, but demanding their colleges divest from companies linked to Israel.Just as Trumpism is no guarantor of free speech, nor is it a vanguard of anti-racism: it is, in fact, the opposite. The very real menace of antisemitism has been systematically conflated with any critique of crimes committed by the state of Israel. This is what is meant by “anti-Israel hate”, as Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick as new ambassador to the UN puts it, who became a rightwing icon after facing down university presidents over Israel. The president’s most powerful ally is Elon Musk, a man who in 2023 expressed his agreement with a tweet claiming Jewish communities were pushing “hatred against whites”, and recently performed Nazi salutes at a Trump rally.Trump himself declared that Jewish Americans who support the Democrats – that is, the vast majority – “hate their religion”, “hate everything about Israel” and “should be ashamed of themselves”, and menacingly said they would have a “lot” of blame if he lost the presidential election. The university protests, on the other hand, had a large Jewish presence, and hundreds of Jewish students signed a letter rejecting “the ways that these encampments have been smeared as antisemitic”.Indeed, Columbia in particular victimised its own students. The university banned Jewish Voice for Peace before the encampment began, ordered police raids which led to more than 100 students being arrested, disciplined and expelled, and targeted sympathetic academics.One was Katherine Franke, a professor who was publicly denounced by Stefanik and forced into retirement. Far from protecting Jewish students, Franke claims, this is about “radical advocates for Israel” lying about the campus protests. “This university has bent a knee and coddled bullies,” she says of Columbia’s repression of students’ free speech – and still it had its funding slashed.It gets more sinister. The Department of Homeland Security arrested one of the lead negotiators of Columbia’s encampment: Mahmoud Khalil, a US green card holder of Palestinian origin, married to a US citizen who is eight months pregnant. Unknown to his wife, he was sent more than 1,000 miles away to a notorious detention centre in Louisiana. The department’s claim: that “he led activities aligned to Hamas”, a blatant attempt to conflate Palestinian solidarity with the militant group responsible for war crimes on 7 October.Far from restoring free speech, Trump’s administration is incinerating the first amendment. When it comes to Palestine, free speech simply does not exist. Surely there is one man who will be particularly incensed by this outrage. After all, just last week he grandly proclaimed: “We have to ask ourselves the question as leaders: ‘Are we willing to defend people even if we disagree with what they say?’ If you’re not willing to do that, I don’t think you’re fit to lead Europe or the United States.” That was the vice-president, JD Vance.But the truth is, the US right never actually cared about free speech. It was simply a ruse, intended to stigmatise any attempt to rebut its bigotry against largely voiceless minorities. The Trump administration has escalated the biggest onslaught against free speech since McCarthyism: even before its assumption of power, those opposed to Israel’s genocide have faced being deplatformed, victimised and indeed targeted by institutions like Columbia.Yet it was not just the hardcore right who defamed these protests. Many self-described “liberals” and “centrists” joined in, smearing those opposed to some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century as hateful, dangerous extremists – Jewish Americans among them. In doing so, they helped legitimise the inevitable authoritarian crackdown that is now under way. Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of Jewish American campaign group IfNotNow, told me we are now seeing “the terrifying logical conclusion of smearing anyone calling for Palestinian freedom as an antisemite: a white nationalist administration carrying out its war on civil rights and free speech under the banner of ‘fighting antisemitism’. We are all endangered by this blatant assault on our democracy.”It would be deeply naive to believe this repression will end with the attacks on people expressing solidarity with Palestine. A precedent that is established can swiftly be expanded. As it is, the US media are increasingly menaced by – among other things – Trump’s libel actions, the threat of vexatious investigations and plutocrats like Jeff Bezos bending the knee to the would-be king. Free speech is being pummelled by those who claim to be its greatest advocates.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Ice arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia protests, lawyer says

      by

      A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested on Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who claimed they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a state department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated last December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.The arrest comes as Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.The administration has placed particular scrutiny on Columbia, announcing Friday that it would be cutting $400m in grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the elite school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.The authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, why he was being detained, Greer said. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”A spokesperson for Columbia said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property. The spokesperson declined to say if the school had received a warrant for Khalil’s arrest.Messages seeking comment were left with the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice.Khalil had become one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia. As students erected tents on campus last spring, Khalil was picked to serve as a negotiator on behalf of students and met frequently with university administrators.When classes resumed in September, he told the Associated Press that the protests would continue: “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”An immigration court can revoke a green card but government departments do not have that power.Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals.Khalil was among several investigated by a newly-created university disciplinary committee – the Office of Institutional Equity – looking into students at the institution who have expressed criticism of Israel, according to records shared with the AP.In recent weeks, the committee has sent notices to dozens of students for activities ranging from sharing social media posts in support of Palestinian people to joining “unauthorized” protests.“I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” Khalil said last week.After refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, Khalil said the university threatened to block him from graduating. But when he appealed the decision through a lawyer, they eventually backed down, Khalil said.“They just want to show Congress and rightwing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” Khalil said. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”Columbia students kick-started the tent encampment protests at their Manhattan campus last spring, with the idea catching on at dozens of campuses across the US. At Columbia and many other colleges, their academic administrations called in the relevant local police department and hundreds of students were arrested.“Targeting a student activist is an affront to the rights of Mahmoud Khalil and his family. This blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America. Furthermore, Khalil and all people living in the United States are afforded due process. A green card can only be revoked by an immigration judge, showing once again that the Trump administration is willing to ignore the law in order to instill fear and further its racist agenda,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of New York Immigration, Coalition said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.“DHS must immediately release Khalil,” he said. More